I’m working to recover 10,000 posts from my old forum that was on an old Joomla 1.5.22 site – Kunena V1.5.66 – The site was the victim of an attempted hack in 2010 that achieved nothing apart from screwing up 3000 registrations and killing the site it never recovered, it was a real blow to the community – I have restarted the site again on WP (.org not .com) in a development domain before switching to the main hosting and have selected to use BBpress for the new forum – I had given up the ghost on the old content until I saw this thread, now I’m all excited because the meat of the old site was on the old forum!!

Apologies for being a real numpty but is there an installation instruction? I can’t figure out where I place the kunena1.php file to start attempting the migration – I have tried in the root of the joomla domain but it 404’s.

I worked out that the Kunena1 migrator was within bbpress – duh! My Kunena database had the jos_fb_ preface instead of the jos_kunena_ preface – I manually changed those-

I have now managed to import the replies however despite running the repair option, the forums and topics were not imported – It seems to have appended an extre Re: in front of each (so they read Re:Re:Topic). It’s possible that the kunena version I have might have used a slightly different table naming convention or somethung

I’m reading around as much as I can so I’m not posting too many silly questions here but your help is appreciated.

“It seems to have appended an extre Re: in front of each (so they read Re:Re:Topic)”

The Re: should only be added to the title of a reply, this should not be adding them to the topics and this shows that the SQL in the importer isn’t quite matching up with your database.

The SQL queries below are based on the Kunena1.php importer and use the prefix jos_ as the table prefix for the bbPress importer.

When the importer fails you should see an error message like the following:WordPress database error: [Unknown column 'kunena_categories.locked1' in 'field list']

In this particular case the importer was looking for jos_kunena_categories.locked1 where jos_kunena_categories is the table name and locked1 is the field name. I used ‘locked1’ as a way to force an error to show the example, so if I knew my version of the database should be looking at the field locked instead of locked1 you can find the 'from_fieldname' => 'locked1' in Kunena1.php and update that with the correct field mapping 'from_fieldname' => 'locked',.

Another way you can go about this is to jump directly into phpMyAdmin and test each of the following SQL queries, there are primarily four queries are as follows:

Again I used prefix jos_ for my database and you will need to change this to match your own database table prefix.

Forums

SELECT
kunena_categories.id AS id,
kunena_categories.parent AS parent,
kunena_categories.numTopics AS numTopics,
kunena_categories.numPosts AS numPosts,
kunena_categories.name AS name,
kunena_categories.description AS description,
kunena_categories.ordering AS ordering,
kunena_categories.locked AS locked
FROM jos_kunena_categories AS kunena_categories

Topics

SELECT
kunena_messages.thread AS thread,
kunena_messages.catid AS catid,
kunena_messages.userid AS userid,
kunena_messages.ip AS ip,
kunena_messages_text.message AS message,
kunena_messages.subject AS subject,
kunena_messages.time AS time,
kunena_messages.locked AS locked
FROM jos_kunena_messages AS kunena_messages
INNER JOIN jos_kunena_messages_text AS kunena_messages_text
ON kunena_messages_text.mesid = kunena_messages.id
WHERE kunena_messages.parent = 0

Replies

SELECT
kunena_messages.id AS id,
kunena_messages.catid AS catid,
kunena_messages.thread AS thread,
kunena_messages.ip AS ip,
kunena_messages.userid AS userid,
kunena_messages.subject AS subject,
kunena_messages_text.message AS message,
kunena_messages.time AS time
FROM jos_kunena_messages AS kunena_messages
INNER JOIN jos_kunena_messages_text AS kunena_messages_text
ON kunena_messages.id = kunena_messages_text.mesid
WHERE kunena_messages.parent != 0

Users

SELECT
users.id AS id,
users.password AS password,
users.username AS username,
users.email AS email,
users.registerDate AS registerDate
FROM jos_users AS users

That’s a bit to digest so I’ll leave it at that for now and it is probably as clear as mud unless you are a seasoned SQL junkie.

Hi Stephen – many thanks for your lengthy and considered reply. You are right that a lot of the php MySQL is over my head

I believe that the issue is that between 1.5.9 and 1.6 of kunena, the layout of the database changed in more ways than renaming the tables and therefore my old-style database won’t work. My information is in the jos_fb_ format

I have tried updating Kunena to a 1.6.x version however I’m hitting other problems with that –

Uncaught Exception: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=9 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci’ at line 9 SQL=CREATE TABLE jos_kunena_version ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, version varchar(20) NOT NULL, versiondate date NOT NULL, installdate date NOT NULL, build varchar(20) NOT NULL, versionname varchar(40) DEFAULT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=9 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci.

I believe I need to change TYPE to ENGINE and have found one set of instructions for that, but they do not work so I’m backed into a different corner.

I put up a post on the kunena forum asking for help, even if I have to pay a few bucks for that – but really I only need the old database content to be transferred into the new database in the correct format, the rest of the site is to be scrapped – is it possible that the database tweaks can be done independently from upgrading the kunena installation? or can I tweak the importer to work with the jos_fb_ version – I don’t have the skills to do that but I suspect it’s a major job and probably unfeasible.

Your importer clearly works as intended and thank you for making it available, the problem I believe is most likely to be upstream but I won’t know until I can sort that bit out. Unless there is a way to make the database transfer (I can pay a wee bit) I’m not quite sure where to go next.

Then open a table, and click ‘Operations’ and in the ‘Table options’ section you will now see ‘Storage Engine’ where you can change this from MyISAM to InnoDB once you click ‘Go’ you will a success or error message.

is it possible that the database tweaks can be done independently from upgrading the kunena installation? or can I tweak the importer to work with the jos_fb_ version – I don’t have the skills to do that but I suspect it’s a major job and probably unfeasible.

You should in theory be able to do the import without modifying your database, and this reply probably should have been before the previous reply. 😉

So try opening up phpMyAdmin and running the queries I posted before your previous reply.

If all else fails then you can try upgrading Kunena and converting the database engine.

thank you for this and the time you are taking to help – I’ve read your previous very carefully.

Maybe I misunderstood something – The queries you suggest are all in the new form – e.g. jos_kunena_categories.id whereas my database is jos_fb_categories.id from Kunena 1.5.x- I checked on a test install of a newer version of Kunena and table names and fields have changed so I think the jos_fb_ tables/fields are all wrong for the migrator.

I do have backups and am willing to have a go but the queries are jos_kunena format not jos_fb – so much is unfamiliar and ergo scary!

Thanks Stephen and sorry for being a pain, I really do want to get this out of your way and me out of your hair 🙂

Hi Stephen – I wanted to come back and update this thread with a SOLVED notice – At the end of the day the solution was simple – don’t upgrade to Kunena 1.6 – upgrade to Kunena 1.7.2 instead!! I spent weeks looking for solutions but the fix took only a few minutes when I made the decision to skip multiple versions. bbpress is working with 7500 old posts seeding the new forum

Anyway for anyone else following who has the same issues – upgrade to a later version that is still capable of working with Joomla 1.5.

A huge thank you to Stephen for taking the time to work with me on getting this migration happening

Paul, Awesome, glad you got to a point that the importer worked for you.

There are quite a few versions of Joomla and Kunena and I’ve tried to cover as many combinations as possible and without knowing either platform very well it’s not the easiest import scenario to support so your feedback is much appreciated.

I’m trying to import an old Kunena forum (Version 1.5.12) in a new BBPress (BuddyPress) forum.
I change manually the tablename in Kunena1.php, everything is normally ok, but seems something is not good because when I click on start, the script write there is nothing to import.

Repair any missing information: Continue
Conversion Complete
No reply_to parents to convert
No replies to convert
No tags to convert
No super stickies to stick
No stickies to stick
No topics to convert
No forum parents to convert
No forums to convert
No passwords to clear
No users to convert
Starting Conversion

Small update. It is working now, Kunena forum is imported and all is working.
Problem was in Ampps. Installed new Wamp, imported Kunena forum, exported forum, imported again in Ampps and all is OK now.

Had “small” problem importing users, dont know why. Found at Google that i need to uninstall and delete Buddy Press then install it again after import.

You see, that one was piece of cake to fix whem you have error in converter. My first problem was pain in the ass when it is black hole, no error, nothing, just spinning and so can it continue for 3 years.

Plus it is enigma how it can import 80-90% of topics and replies then stop.

Finally I’ve written a small script to migrate kunena attachments to GD bbPress attachments. It is in a very early stage, any help are really wellcome. You must run the script as standalone and only after the kunena migration has been performend using the importer distributed with bbPress.

Now I’d like to write a script to convert kunena BBCode into bbPress HTML because there are some bbcodes not converted.

Finally I’ve written a small script to migrate kunena attachments to GD bbPress attachments

@cybnet Awesome thanks for this, I added it to the (still sparse) Kunena docs here.

I’ll take a closer look when I get the chance and see what ideas I can come up with. I was at a WordPress Meetup a couple of months ago that demoed a few different ways to move media from one install to another that once time permits I’d love to take a shot at including it in our importer.

Now I’d like to write a script to convert kunena BBCode into bbPress HTML because there are some bbcodes not converted.

This I can most definitely help out with now.

The SMF and phpBB importers both have some good examples of converting BBCode to ‘native’ bbPress (WordPress) code. I am simply use regular expressions to convert them on the fly as each topic or reply is converted.

You can see the SMF regex here and the phpBB here. There are probably quite a few that we can repurpose and if not make up a list for me and I’ll work towards getting them added to the Kunena importers in a future release.

I just had a quick look at the attachment migration script and you would need to change Line 28 and rename the table name j25_kunena_attachments to the same name as your attachments table name of your original Kunena database.

I would not advertise commercial plugin here if i not tested theirs K2 to WordPress converter. It is simply brilliant. Imported absolte everything, custom fields, attachments, dates, page views, and aranged whole WordPress so that i didnt have any work to do with organizing content.

@stagger-lee Thanks for the heads up and I’m glad you eventually got your site converted, hopefully we will get all these issues nailed down in the not to distant future so there will be a free open source importer/converter for Joomla’s Kunena forums to bbPress 🙂

Ah cool… In a future I dream of it would be nice to migrate these importers to standalone WordPress importers so when you import Joomla to WordPress if you also want Kunena to bbPress then check a box… Not going to happen anytime soon, but one day once the core WordPress import and export gets some loving updates this should be a little easier to implement. 🙂